Chapter 18
The guards who’d escorted Katy out had offered to call her a cab, but she’d insisted she could do it herself and had walked out of the gate and onto the street.
One of the guards followed her as far as the end of the driveway. “Ma’am,” he called. “I really don’t think you should be walking off on your own.”
Without looking back, she flipped him off, then fumbled with the latch on her clutch until it opened.
She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. It remained black. She tapped it again, but nothing happened.
She jammed her finger against it over and over. “Turn on, dammit!”
The phone refused to come to life.
The last she’d checked she’d had plenty of battery, so it couldn’t be out of power. It never dawned on her that the dip in the pool might be the problem.
She slammed her hand against it, thinking the impact would wake it up, but instead she knocked the phone out of her grip and onto the asphalt.
“Shit.”
She leaned down to grab it and ended up kicking it against the white stucco wall that surrounded Damian’s property.
She leaned her back against the wall and slid down it until she was sitting on the ground next to her phone. When she picked it up, she cursed again. Not only was it still dead, but now there was a giant diagonal crack running across the screen.
She dropped the phone in her lap, covered her face with her hands, and yelled in frustration.
This was not how the evening was supposed to go. The party was supposed to be the event that would turn things around for her. The night when she proved she belonged with the A-listers.
That damn Emma. If she hadn’t been there, everything would have been fine.
Katy didn’t know how, but she would still find a way to make Emma pay.
She was so wrapped up in her thoughts of revenge that she didn’t hear the car pull to a stop next to her or the whirl as the passenger window descended.
“Miss Katy?” a gravelly voice said.
She looked up, prepared to tell whoever it was to go to hell, then smiled. “Well, hello there.”
—
While Katy was trying to get her phone to work, Billy and the others exited the front of Damian’s house to where several valets waited.
One of them approached. “May I have your ticket, please?”
“We have a driver,” Ben said. “He should be here momentarily.”
“Very good.” The man bowed his head and returned to his post.
Someone walked up from behind them and put one arm around Billy and the other around Ben. “Are all of you Centurion Pictures people contractually obligated to travel in a pack?” It was the unmistakable voice of superstar Tom Norman.
“Ben has us on a tight leash,” Billy said.
“Don’t listen to him,” Ben said. “I have, on occasion, allowed them to do things on their own.”
“As long as we submit a request a month in advance,” Tessa said.
“In triplicate,” Peter said.
Tom’s face hardened in an exaggeration of his tough-guy movie persona. “Blink twice if you need me to help you escape.”
Everyone but Ben, Mari, and Stone blinked.
Tom looked at Stone and Mari. “You two don’t need saving?”
“As a member of Centurion’s board, my participation in group activities is purely voluntary,” Stone said.
“And I’m just a guest star in this episode,” Mari said.
Tom laughed. “That’s a great line. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to steal it.”
“Only if you pay royalties.”
“Deal.”
A black Ford Bronco that had come through the front gate a few seconds before pulled to a stop nearby.
“Out of my way,” a voice growled.
Two men who’d been waiting off to the side pushed past Billy and the others to get to the vehicle.
One of them rammed hard into Billy’s shoulder, knocking him into Peter. “I said move.”
Billy glanced over at his assailant. It was none other than Victor Popov.
“Hey!” Peter said. “You didn’t need to—”
Billy raised a hand to stop him. “It’s okay. Being a jackass is part of his DNA.”
Popov whirled around. “What did you just call me?”
“I’m sure I said that loud enough for you to hear. Perhaps you should get your ears checked.”
Popov walked right up to Billy until they were only inches apart, his companion shadowing him.
Tom stepped in next to Billy and glowered at Popov.
“It’s okay, Tom,” Billy said. “Mr. Popov was just leaving. Weren’t you, Victor?”
Popov’s eyes narrowed. “You think you are so smart, don’t you?”
“Not particularly, but I have my moments.”
Out of the corner of Billy’s eye, he could see a pair of security guards who’d been stationed near the valets moving toward them.
“If you were really smart,” Popov said, “you would know not to make me angry.”
“You say that like I should care.”
Popov’s face reddened. “You should care, you son of a—”
One of the security guards maneuvered his way between the two men. “That’s enough, sir,” he said as he pushed Popov back.
“Do not touch me!” Popov barked.
“I believe your vehicle is waiting,” the other guard said, gesturing toward the Bronco.
Popov looked like he was going to argue again, but after a moment, he sent another glare Billy’s way, then headed into his vehicle.
As the Bronco pulled away, the Centurion group’s limousine minibus moved into the vacated space.
Mari let out a breath. “Well, that was entertaining.”
“I take it you know him,” Tessa said.
“He’s the guy Billy and I encountered on the golf course this morning,” Stone said.
“The one who was going to hit his caddie?” Hattie asked.
“The very same,” Billy said.
“Maybe you should have hit him,” Ben said.
“I’m starting to think the same.”
The bus door opened, and they filed on.
As the bus exited Damian’s property, Billy noticed Popov’s Bronco stopped at the side of the road.
It looked like someone was sitting on the ground next to the vehicle, talking to someone inside, but the area was too dark to tell for sure.
A moment later, the bus turned onto the street and the Bronco moved out of sight.
—
Popov was wondering if he’d made a mistake by offering Katy a ride. Her clothes were still wet from the pool, and the seat beside him was getting soaked. Then again, the vehicle wasn’t his, and he’d have the woman out of her outfit soon enough.
“Sorry about all this,” she said, glancing at her dress. “I swear it wasn’t my fault.”
“It’s fine,” he said.
She smiled and shivered.
He frowned. “Aleksei, give her your jacket.”
“Yes, Mr. Popov.”
Aleksei, who had moved to the front passenger seat to make room for Katy, pulled off his sports coat and passed it back.
“Thank you,” she said, wrapping it over her torso.
Popov pulled out his cell phone and called Vladimir.
In Belarusian, he asked, “Is Lundstrom going to make it to the meeting on time?”
“He has been at his office for the last hour and a half,” Vladimir replied.
“How far is it from the hotel?”
“About ten minutes.”
Popov checked his watch. It was twenty minutes until midnight. “Give him five minutes. If he hasn’t left by then, go in and encourage him to do so.”
“Very good.”
“Call me when he’s on his way.”
“I will. Before you hang up…”
“Yes?”
“I have information about the owner of the building Lundstrom was sneaking around. It is owned by a woman named Emma Perez.”
“Emma Perez?” Popov said. “That sounds familiar.”
Katy twisted in her seat at the mention of the name, but he paid her no mind.
“Because she is Lundstrom’s boss at RRE.”
That’s right. The name had been in the research he’d gone over about the company. Perez was its head engineer. “Why would he be interested in her place?” he asked.
The question was rhetorical, and Vladimir knew his boss well enough not to respond.
“Keep me posted,” Popov said, then hung up.
“I heard you say Emma Perez’s name,” Katy said, her lip curled in disgust. “Why were you talking about her?”
Popov turned to her, surprised. “Do you know her?”
Katy scoffed. “Why do you think I’m wet?”
“I do not understand.”
She motioned to her damp hair and then the rest of her. “She’s the one who pushed me into the pool.”
Popov stifled a snort. He was pretty sure Katy had done the pushing, but that wasn’t what was important. “The woman in the water with you was Emma Perez?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“Emma Perez with RRE?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“The company she works for.”
“I don’t know what company she works for. She’s some kind of scientist or something. Works on the windmills.”
“Wind turbines.”
“Same thing.”
It wasn’t, but Popov didn’t correct her. He was sure they were talking about the same woman, though.
That was more a curiosity than a problem, though. In fact, it was possible Katy could give him insight into RRE’s head engineer.
The problem was that Katy having heard Perez’s name likely meant she’d heard Popov say Lundstrom, too.
Popov couldn’t have anyone outside a select few know his connection to Marty.
Especially given that, once the takeover of RRE had been completed, Marty would be permanently disposed of by Popov’s men.
The last thing he needed was Katy seeing a news story about Marty, making the connection, and reporting Popov to the authorities.
“Why were you talking about Emma?” Katy pressed.
Ignoring her, Popov tapped a text into his phone and hit send. A second later, Aleksei pulled his own phone out. After checking his screen, he whispered to the driver.
The Bronco pulled into an empty bank parking lot, coming to a halt behind the building, out of view from the road. The second Bronco that had been following stopped behind them.
Katy looked out the window. “What are we doing here?”
“We’ll just be a moment,” Popov said.
Aleksei exited the vehicle and walked back to the other SUV. After a quick conversation with the other driver, he opened the rear hatch of Popov’s Bronco and unzipped the equipment bag they’d brought along.
“What’s he doing?” Katy asked.
“Getting something that will help you stop feeling cold.”
“Oh, like a blanket?”
“Kind of like that.”
She gave him a nervous glance, then sat up and put a hand on her door handle. “You know what? The place where I’m staying is just around the block. I think I can walk from here.”
Though she had had a lot to drink at the party, it apparently wasn’t enough to completely dull her survival instincts.
She pulled the handle, but Popov grabbed her arm.
“We can drive you,” he said.
She flashed a forced smile. “No, thank you. I’ll walk.”
As she tried to free her arm, he dug his fingers into her bicep.
“Ow! That hurts. Please, just let me go.”
Her door swung open. She twisted toward it, obviously thinking she could make a quick escape, but Aleksei was standing in her way.
When she noticed the syringe in his hand, she started to scream.
Popov slapped a hand over her mouth, muffling the sound, and nodded to Aleksei. The man jabbed the needle into her thigh, injecting the sedative into her system.
Popov kept his hand in place until she lost consciousness, then leaned her against the now closed door.
Once Aleksei was back in his seat, Popov said, “Let’s go.”
—
Marty couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so frustrated.
He’d spent nearly two hours searching through Emma’s office for the code to her home alarm system and had found not a damn thing.
It looked like he was going to have to wait for a workday when she was called out of the office, so he could search her bag again. Which meant he wasn’t going to get into her house for days, at the very least, and even then only if he was lucky.
“Dammit! Can’t anything go my—”
An alarm blared from his phone, causing him to jerk in surprise.
He retrieved the device and fumbled at the screen until he was able to kill the noise.
He’d set the alarm to remind him about his stupid midnight meeting with the guy from VP Bela Capital.
He checked the time. If he didn’t leave now, he’d risk showing up late. He had a feeling that wouldn’t be a good idea.
He scanned Emma’s office one last time, then headed for the elevator, cursing all the way.